


Heart of the Pack

by ficlicious, silvershadowkit



Series: To Have and to Hold [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, BAMF everyone, Consent is Sexy, Everyone Is Poly Because Avengers, Everyone is Part of the Pack, F/F, F/M, Female Tony Stark, Implied/Referenced Mind Control, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Mental Coercion, Multi, OT Many, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pack Building, Pack Dynamics, Polyamorous Pack, Rewritten History, Rule 63, Trope Subversion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-04
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-07-12 06:38:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7089277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ficlicious/pseuds/ficlicious, https://archiveofourown.org/users/silvershadowkit/pseuds/silvershadowkit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time, omegas were the heart of the pack, and society revolved around the queen. Then the alphas rose and threw down the omegas, keeping the lifebearers and priests chained, and killing any who matured into queens, eliminating the threat to the new world order. Over time, the complexity of status was lost, and the world is dominated by a hierarchy of alphas, ignored betas, and chained omegas." </p><p>Some families kept to the old ways, hiding and protecting their queens, but by and large, they were discovered and eliminated by the hunt/kill packs of the alphas. Eventually, only the Carbonells remained, a bare handful of true alphas and betas who held onto the old ways, but even they died out when their last scion, Maria Carbonell, married Howard Stark.</p><p>Now, the only legacy left of the Carbonells is Toni Stark, a product of an unwanted but necessary marriage, and a true queen trying to keep her head down and survive as long as she can. But every shifter needs a pack, and every queen needs a court, the Sentinels and Primes that keep her safe as she keeps the community together.</p><p>And it starts with a scent on the breeze.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silvershadowkit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silvershadowkit/gifts).



> I have never attempted to write A/B/O before, but this notion wouldn't leave me alone. Cue a late night with silvershadowkit on Tumblr IM, and this verse was born. 
> 
> This is pretty much unlike anything I've ever done before, and the entire thing is in flux. Certain things aren't nailed solidly down at the moment. Ships may be added or changed, tags will likely be added, and violence is guaranteed to ensue. 
> 
> Comments welcome.

This is the last time she’s ever taking an Uber in this part of town. 

Toni’s driver leaves her in the middle of fucking nowhere after he hits on her and she politely turns him down, a classy move pulled by a classy guy. Thankfully, she’s not dressed to the nines, so she doesn’t have to deal with increasingly sore feet in high heels, but she hasn’t the slightest clue as to where she is. 

Wherever it is, though, it stinks.

There’s an acrid stink wafting from somewhere, hot and rancid, and for a shifter with a finely attuned sense of smell as Toni has, it’s choking and nauseating. She has to haul the hem of her shirt over her nose in order to avoid retching into the gutter. Even still, her eyes water ferociously as she hurries in what she hopes is a direction away from the open sewer smell.

Lights beckon her from ahead, a diner wafting the smell of roasting chicken and greasy fries. Her mouth watering, she heads for the lights. A diner in New York is as good as a landmark, after all, and she figures she can at least get a plate of dinner after she calls Happy to pick her up. 

But her night is abruptly derailed, because she is almost free and clear of the stench of the streets, and then her nose catches a whiff of one of the headiest scents she has ever smelt.

She halts in mid-step, head automatically turning to track the shifting trail, nose twitching. The smell of shifter, warm and compatible enough to trigger her urge to hunt. And that? That should be enough to put her right off from the start. It’s her every intention to fight the urge to track the scent back to its source, to find the shifter it belongs to, to drink in their scent and make them hers. She’s been down this path before, and it never works out. Sometimes, they’re too weak-willed, minds and hearts fickle and treacherous. Others are stereotypical modern-day alphas with abrasive personalities and an overreliance on dominance, and their behaviour always,  _ always,  _ turns her off like they flipped a switch. 

Of course, it’s never been this strong, this tempting. This mouthwateringly fine and complex. There are two scents intermingled, one alpha and one beta, complementing each other in ways only pack typically develop.  _ Well, that’s that,  _ she thinks, because the last thing she needs is the attention poaching someone else’s packmates will bring to her doorstep. Even though she’s so terribly tired of fighting her own drives, even though everything she is screams out for a pack of her own, she turns away, determined to keep walking towards the diner and ignore the delectable smell. 

It’s easier with her back to the scent-trail, but then the wind shifts and her determination vanishes like smoke when the intermingled scents hit her nose again. The long-denied, ruthlessly-suppressed drive to find her court breaks free of its titanium chains and sends her coursing down the scent-trail like a first-moon pup. It’s all she can do to keep herself from shifting in the open, in the middle of the street, as she hurries after it.

The neighbourhood gets progressively worse the longer she follows it. Businesses and prim homes give way to warehouses and dark alleys, cracked pavement and blowing trash. From every corner, she’s watched, mostly human eyes, but with the occasional yellowish undertone of shifters tinging the whites.  She stays wary, but makes no movement towards them. They, thankfully, make no movement towards her. 

Scents waft towards her, alpha and beta, acrid and dull, clearing the trail from her senses. She should leave. This isn’t a place for her, not filled like it is with strange packs and hostile alphas. She reaches into her pocket, gets her hand on her cell phone to call Happy to come pick her up, and the breeze changes again. 

Her nose twitches and the scent washes into her nostrils again. She inhales, deep and sharp, and her head swims pleasantly, like a hit of pure oxygen. She pulls her hand out of her pocket, leaves the phone behind, and keeps hunting.

The trail leads to a run-down hole-in-the-wall strip club. Over the door, a neon sign proclaims the place to be “Jackit”, and promises live nude girls inside. The door is closed, but Toni can smell cigarettes and booze, semen and sweat, shifter and human, hear the heavy bass throbbing out of the walls. Her nose wrinkles with distaste.  _ This  _ is where the two shifters she’s tracking can be found? 

The universe has one hell of a sense of humor. 

For the dozenth time, Toni turns to leave. This is dangerous territory for her to be in, both in neighbourhood and in consequences. She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath through her mouth, and holds it for three heartbeats.

The volume of the music surges abruptly, and she involuntarily opens her eyes, automatically turning towards the potential threat. The door is opened, and a lean blond shifter in a black shirt with STAFF across the chest in white block letters muscles a clearly drunk, clearly belligerent burly human out of the bar with an arm twisted behind his back. 

Toni can’t smell anything but heaven. Rich earth and cool forests, open sky and a breeze ruffling her fur. It’s perfect, it’s divine. It’s  _ home _ . 

She might be in deep, deep trouble here.  

Blondie shoves the drunk with one arm, sending him stumbling and falling onto the sidewalk. The drunk snarls from his undignified sprawl on the concrete. “You’re a real asshole, Clint. I wasn’t doin’ nothin’.”

“Sure,” Blondie – Clint, apparently – says easily, crosses his arms and leans against the side of the doorframe, and Toni tries desperately to not walk directly to him and bury her nose in his hair. “Next time you’re doing nothing, keep your hands off Wanda’s ass. I’m sick of warning you, Rumlow. Next time, I’m not going to stop her from tearing your throat out. Get me?”

Rumlow gets unsteadily to his feet, staggers, nearly goes down again and spits in Clint’s direction. “Fuck you, Barton.”

“Not if you paid me. Now get off my sidewalk before I don’t find this amusing anymore.” 

Toni’s barely paying Rumlow any attention as he stumbles in her direction, because her focus is all on Clint. She’s downwind, so his scent is a river on the breeze, and her eyes are bare slits, face lifted into it, drinking as much as she can in deep, intoxicating breaths. Her need for a pack, strangled and denied for years, screams at her, and she's helpless to resist its call. 

She takes a shaky step forward, out of the shadows of the alley and towards the bar, just as Rumlow is lurching past. Her senses are abruptly assailed with stale cigarette smoke, body odor, the sharp tang of whiskey and the yeasty smell of beer, and she staggers into the brick wall, eyes watering and nose stinging. 

A hand, damp and rough, fastens on her wrist. “Hey,” Rumlow slurs, and is in her personal space, weaving on his feet and leering at her up and down. “Hey pretty lady. Looking for a good time?”

There’s no yellow in his eyes, no scent of shifter on him. He’s human. Strong, but human. Standing between her and pack. She bares her teeth, feeling her teeth sharpen across her tongue, feels a warning growl rumble in her throat. Deep in the back of her head, where she’s still conscious of her actions, she tries in horror to haul back the instinct to tear the threat to shreds, the rage hammering in her temples, but her skin is tight and hot and itchy, threatening to split into fur and muscle, claws and fangs.

And then there’s another hand on her wrist, gentle but firm, and one on Rumlow’s wrist, pressing into tendons and pressure points to make him let go. “Get off my sidewalk doesn’t mean accost other people, Rumlow,” Clint says with a warning growl. 

Toni calms almost immediately, wrapped in the heady scent once more, soothed by the nearness of body heat and solid presence. The itch of fur threatening to erupt recedes as the tension drains. Rumlow howls and curses, and then he’s flying as Clint throws him in a casual display of shifter strength. 

“Are you alright, miss?” he asks, turning his attention to Toni before Rumlow hits the ground. He still hasn’t let go of her arm, thumb resting over the pulse point of her wrist. She sways towards him, comes nearly into contact, and only superhuman effort drags her back from the brink of burying her face in his neck. “Huh. Um. Awful friendly, aren’t yo-” 

Icy fear screams through her, dousing the drifty, pleasant haze when he whips tight and stiff, nostrils flaring and eyes burning a sudden, faint gold. “You’re a queen,” he says, low and disbelieving. 

“Fuck,” she says, panicked, and tries to pull her arm free. Because now that she's looking for it, she scents hunter alpha on him, rare and dangerous for queens, able to recognize shifters like her, no matter how hard they're hiding. This time, she doesn't fight the change, and snarls at him with eyes bled bright gold, already half shifted into muzzle and fangs, every muscle tight and preparing for the fight to come when his kill-instincts trigger. 

But instead of seizing her roughly, instead of grabbing her and hauling her into an alley, instead of calling his pack to come and execute her, he gently takes her other wrist, and lowers his eyes, looking up at her through his lashes. His thumbs stroke lightly over the inside of her wrists, soothing touches meant to calm and reassure. 

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says gently, and even though he looms over her shorter, slimmer frame, every line in his body is deference and respect. His nostrils are wide, drawing in her scent, and his eyes are just as dreamy as she thinks hers. 

Thrown off-balance by this completely unexpected turn of events, Toni forces the change away, though she doesn’t relax her guard. “This is a trick. You’re a hunter.”

Incredibly, despite the obvious effect her scent is having on him, he grins. “Can’t help what I was born, sweetheart. Doesn’t mean I have to be a macho douchebag, does it?”

He’s disarming, she’ll give him that. Despite herself, she finds her shoulders unbunching, and the last hints of wolf melt back into her human body. “In my experience, it’s a rarely-made distinction,” she says primly, trembling with the effort to not lean directly into him.  _ Home, pack, alpha, court  _ is a constant chant in her hindbrain and she sucks in a shuddering breath, squeezing her eyes closed tight. 

His hand leaves her arm, and then his scent, the smell of his blood, skin, floods her nose. Earth and forest and wind and fur and home. She’s grabbed his hand, has her nose pushed into his wrist before she knows what she’s doing, but she can’t bring herself to push his arm away. It’s filling up a terrible, hollow place behind her heart. 

“Where’s your pack?” he asks in a normal tone, as though she’s not trying to inhale him alive. 

She looks up at him without raising her head. She has no idea how he’s managing to both tower over her and still be deferential in stature as he looks back down at her. “I don’t have one.”

“How long’s it been?”

“Never had one,” she mumbles, closing her eyes as she continues to breathe him in and out. “Never could trust anyone enough to let them know.”

His reply is a low, disbelieving whistle. “Jesus Christ,” he says thickly, and she hears him swallow overhead. “Is that why you’re here? Is that...”

“I don’t know,” she sighs, turns her head to rub her cheek against his wrist. It’s partly calculated, partly instinctual. If he’s trying to lull her into a false sense of security, now’s the time he’d strike, with his hand closer to her unprotected throat. But all he does is stand very, very still. “I scented you. You and another. Couldn’t resist following. God, I tried not to. But you–” She stops fighting it, just steps into his personal space, leans up into his throat and inhales deeply, then sighs with contentment. “I could roll in you,” she says dreamily, and she knows she sounds drunk.

His hands close on her shoulders, but she’s too far gone to tense up. Everything her father could never provide, everything her cold, lonely childhood and miserable adolescent years lacked, everything she’s been craving for half her life is here, in the drumming of a pulse, in the overwhelming smells of  _ home  _ and  _ court  _ buried in the alpha scent, in the heat of a body near hers. 

**oOoOoOo**

Clint knows he’s lost the second he catches the scent of the queen he just rescued from Rumlow. She’s not the first he’s met, not by a long shot. There was a brunet man with his skinny blond beta mate a few years back, and two others during his blooding years that he couldn’t bring himself to kill. They’d all smelt fine to him, pleasant and warm, but this queen… None of them ever affected him like this pack-starved woman trying to crawl through his skin to swim in his scent. 

It’s a powerful sense, scent, and he knows that, but he’d always thought the stories of knowing your pack the moment you catch whiff of them were just that. Stories. Fairy tales shifters told their pups as they tucked them into bed at night. He’d certainly heard his share of them when he was a whelp. Of course, the older he got, the grimmer his bedtime stories got, tales about aberration and their powers of enthrallment, genetic mistakes smart clans didn’t allow to live. But his very first look at a true omega, a proper queen, and he’d known all the tales were bullshit.

But this woman, nudging her nose now along his jugular and making happy, intoxicated noises, this nameless, random woman, is his pack.  _ His  _ queen. He wants to bury his hands in her hair and nose behind her ear to where her pulse is beating. He wants to shift and roll over to bare his vulnerable throat and underbelly for her to do with as she pleases. She’s sky and pine needles, the sharp metallic rush of hot, red blood from a successful hunt, ozone and petrichor. 

He whimpers and goes painfully hard when she playfully nips at the softest, most vulnerable place in his throat, and takes her by the shoulders. She doesn't protest, just nuzzles closer. “You could belong to me,” she says throatily, “if you want to. I want to belong to you.”

If he wasn't lost before now, that would have done it for him right there. “Sweetheart,” he says, closes his eyes against the pull of hormones and shifter instinct, but can't help folding his arms around her, protective and sheltering. “I don't even know your name.”

“Toni,” she murmurs, and he shudders hard when she licks a hot, wet stripe along his jawline. “Toni Stark.” Shudders again when she brushes her lips over the scent gland under his jaw, where pack leaders make their marks to claim their packmates. “May I?”

He sucks in a breath, and then another. The only thing he wants to do is roll her against the wall, take her while she marks him, and he trembles on the edge of giving in, fighting it down. Because he’s at work, they’re in the middle of the street, and she’s kicking off no small amount of pre-heat hormones that he’s pretty sure she’s unaware she’s doing. And because Natasha’s inside, and they never leave each other behind, no matter what. “No,” he gets out, strangled and hoarse, and under his jaw, Toni goes very, very still. 

He nearly whines when the heady scent, that cloud of absolute bliss, retreats from his nose. Toni pulls out of his arms, golden-blue eyes shocky but clear, face schooling itself to impassivity with fleeting glimpses of hurt intermixed. “I’m sorry,” she says, and her voice is still husky but her tone has gone distantly polite. “I won’t bother you again. Please don’t inform your hunt/kill packs about me.”

Her self-control, while obviously fraying and fragile, is still the most impressive goddamn feat Clint’s ever seen. He’s not sure that, as close to rut as she was to heat, he would have been able to pull back.  _ Queen,  _ his instincts remind him.  _ A true queen omega.  _

She turns to go, and he blurts, “Wait!” She pauses, but doesn’t turn back, and every line in her shoulders and back is stiff and tight. “What are you going to do now?”

She shrugs. “Same thing I've always done,” she says, with a bitter tone that almost but doesn't quite hide the hopeless desperation. “I've managed this long on my own. I'll keep managing.”

He frowns. “Why didn’t you just make me anyway? I know you can. What stopped you?”

She does turn further at that, enough to shoot him an arched eyebrow and a disbelieving look. Her eyes, he’s absolutely astonished to discover, are pure human blue again, guarded and wary. “You said no,” she says, like she’s talking to a child. “Seemed pretty clear that you’re not interested.”

Jesus Christ. Not only a compatible queen, but one who  _ cares about the consent of her pack.  _ “Sweetheart,” he says, closes his eyes, fights down the urge to pull her back and go right back to practically fucking against the alley wall. “I’m interested. I'm  _ definitely  _ interested. Just not in the middle of my shift. Or the street. Never been one for public nudity.”

Some of the hurt and the tension bleeds away from her eyes. “Oh?”

Telegraphing his movements, he reaches out for her, palm up, wrist exposed. After a moment of staring at his hand, she reaches back and slides her hand into his, and relief rushes through him. “Come inside,” he says, gently pulling her towards the staff door. “Curl up in my office. The club’ll close in a couple of hours. We can talk then?”

“Okay,” she says, and lets herself be lead. “You have an office?”

He looks down at her, thinks again that he was doomed from the second he scented her, and risks sliding his arm across her shoulders. She leans willingly enough into his side, and her arm goes around his waist. Primal satisfaction shocks through him, protective instincts screaming to defend the queen. It’s a mighty struggle, but he hasn’t lasted this long because his will is weak. “Of course I do,” he says lightly, and lets himself take a mind-numbing whiff of her hair. “I own the place.”

**oOoOoOo**

He leaves Toni in his office with the shirt he was wearing, after pulling a fresh one from the stash of extras in the storeroom, and makes sure to lock the door behind him. It makes him edgy, knowing there’s a queen in his den, unguarded and unprotected, and growls at himself. He’s not a hormonal teenager anymore, and he should be well-beyond letting his baser urges control him. 

He can feel Natasha’s eyes on him from behind the bar as he returns from the back, knows without having to look that her nostrils are flaring delicately, testing his scent. He grimaces, because it doesn’t matter how much descenter he uses, Natasha can always tell. 

Delaying going over to her is as easy as making his usual rounds, checking on the patrons and making sure the girls aren’t giving any of their distress signs. Pietro’s eyes gleam faint yellow as he gives Clint a thumbs-up, stationed in the hallway leading to the back semi-private rooms. Clint nods in return, knows Pietro’s got his hearing cranked for trouble. Up on stage, vanilla-human Candy’s dancing for the glassy-eyed diehards, and he watches extra sharp for a moment as they peel dollar bills off slender rolls. Drunk as they are, they’re not so much as bending the rules, so he keeps moving, reassured his employee is safe for the time being.

Well, no avoiding the bar anymore. Like a man approaching his own execution, he makes his way towards Natasha, watching her fondly as she flirts with customers too tipsy to realize they’re leaving all their change on the counter when they wander back to the staging area. 

He slides behind the bar, securing the swinging panel behind him, and feels Natasha’s eyes boring into his, though her mouth keeps complimenting the watery-eyed man with the combover in front of her. He pays for his two beers with a ten, leaves four dollars and change behind, and weaves back to his table, sloshing beer over his hands and the floor. Clint makes an exasperated mental note to give that spot an extra swipe of the mop after the bar closes, then gives Natasha his attention. 

Natasha’s nose twitches as he leans in so they can hear each other over the throbbing bass from the DJ booth. “How’re sales?” 

“Could be better,” she says into his ear, and he hears her take a deep, appreciative sniff of his jaw. “Why do I smell … what is that anyway? Smells like…” 

He inches his head back to look at her, and isn’t sure whether to be relieved or satisfied at the dreamy haze clouding her eyes. With a start, he remembers Toni’d come sniffing after a pair of scents.  _ You and another.  _  “What does it smell like, Nat?” he asks softly, and tries not to hope too much. He’s made a makeshift pack for himself, but it isn’t the same. If he doesn’t have to leave any of them behind...

“Rain and earth,” she says, and her nose is practically in his ear, following the traces Toni left on his skin. “Lightning and a sky full of snow. Smells  _ good. _ What is it?”

Paranoia makes him take another careful look around the room, seeing only yellow gleams from Pietro on the other side, and Wanda, returning from the land of private lap dances. Still, it never pays to be too careful, so when he leans back into Natasha’s ear, he cups his hand to block his mouth from sight and whispers as quietly as he thinks he can get away with, “A queen.  _ Our _ queen.”

Natasha starts, then stiffens, her eyes hooded and suspicious. He knows exactly what she’s thinking too. How long it’s been they’ve been waiting for a real pack. One with a purpose and a sense of belonging. How many shifters he’s made into enemies, and how any one of them would not be above using an omega to manipulate him. One hand goes to the side of his neck, and he knows she’s looking for a bite mark. “Not a done deal?” she says with a narrow-eyed look.

He shakes his head. “Almost, but no. She’s in the office in the back, getting high off my shirt, waiting for the bar to close.”

Natasha purses her lips. “I thought you were wearing a new one,” is all she says, and glances at the clock. “We should close early. Technical difficulties. I’ll skip my turn on stage. I can afford to take the hit. Tips’re good here tonight.”

“What technical difficulties?”

Natasha’s grin is sudden and white in the artificial gloom of the club, with just a hint of fang. “The ones we’re about to develop when I start yanking cords out of the back of Victor’s booth. Can’t dance with no music playing, after all.”

Clint sighs, rubs his forehead. “Fine, but if he complains about any damages, Nat, you pay for ‘em. I’m not putting up with his precision calculations and predictions of catastrophe tonight.”

Natasha bumps her hip against his. “Go,” she says fondly. “Get out from behind my bar. You’re ruining my groove.”

“It’s my bar, you mouthy beta,” he grumbles, but does as he’s told. He yelps as she snaps the bar towel against his ass, and glares back at her smug smirk, rubbing the stinging spot. “I get no respect.”

“Not if you’re cutting into my tips, you don’t,” Nat agrees, then tilts her head up to point with her chin across the room. “Potential trouble, Clint. Heads up.”

He follows her gaze to where Cerise, another of his human dancers, straddles the legs of an overly amorous patron, trying to fend off his attempts to cop a feel while sliding money into her thong. “I’m on it,” he says, and strides with purpose towards the groper. It’s good to have an outlet for all those head-rearing protective instincts pounding at his chest. 

**oOoOoOo**

Toni doesn’t move much once Clint deposits her onto the couch and hauls his shirt over his head, passing it wordlessly to her. She lifts it to her nose and breathes deeply, head swimming and swirling, sorting the nuances and complexities of the scent out one by one. She’s aching to touch him, her mouth has gone bone dry at the sight of his naked chest and shoulders, but she keeps herself restrained because if he didn’t want to end up bonding in an alleyway, she  _ definitely _ doesn’t want to in the back office of a strip club. 

The click of the door locking is almost drowned by the sound of the music, and it should make Toni panic, since she doesn’t take kindly to being locked up anywhere. Instead, it just makes her feel safer, because she has a gut feeling it wasn’t done to keep her in, but to keep others  _ out.  _

She knows this is crazy. She’s been passing unnoticed in shifter society for years, mostly by avoiding gatherings like the plague, but also by maintaining absolute, iron control over herself. She’s never come this close to spontaneous heat, never been so distracted by a scent she’s lost track of her surroundings. Never allowed herself to be locked into a room with no windows by a strange alpha she literally met ten minutes ago. 

She should be panicking, clawing at the walls, breaking out the queen-level whammy to force them to release her. Even as she thinks it, she recoils from the thought, sickened and disturbed.  _ Unnatural compulsion,  _ she reminds herself, swallows hard against the rise of bile in her throat.  _ Remember Howard. Remember Howard. Never again.  _

It’s easier than usual to shake off the memory of her father’s sullen, rage-twisted, ashen-grey face in the moment he went loose and slack and collapsed onto the floor. There’s no phantom of lingering acridity of death here, just hints of smoke and sweat from the club, leather from the couch, and Clint. She buries her nose in Clint’s shirt, breathes deeply, and curls into the fabric. Stretching sideways, she pillows her head on one of the arms of the overstuffed couch and, surrounded by the smell of what could be her home, lets herself drift to sleep. 

The slide of a key into the lock wakes her an indeterminate amount of time later, and her eyes snap open. For a moment, she doesn’t recognize where she is and, despite the fact that her nose is still buried in the shirt with the comforting smell, bolts into a position from which to better defend herself. She growls in warning as the door begins to open, a full-chested rumble pitched to scare the shit out of anyone foolish enough to disturb her. 

The door stops dead, and her growl subsides, but she remains hyperfocused on the door, practically daring it to open. “Toni, sweetheart, it’s just me,” Clint says from just outside, tone soft and respectful. “I’d like to come in, since it’s my office, and I’d really like to not get my throat torn out for doing so.”

It snaps back to her in a rush, the scent trail leading to the strip club, denning down in Clint’s office to wait for the club to close. There’s no music playing anymore, and the lights are on in the hall where they’d been dimmed before. Her face flames with embarrassment and she clears her throat awkwardly, running her hands through her hair to straighten out the sleep tangles. “Yeah. Sorry. I’m good, I promise.”

The door eases open and Clint steps in with a redheaded shifter trailing him. Toni eyes the other woman warily, testing the air to try and get her scent. It hits her as cinnamon and heather, cold hard steel and deep drifts of fluffy snow. The beta she smelled before. “Oh,” she breathes. “It’s you.”

The redhead clearly isn’t used to bending her head for anyone and, despite the fact that she outranks this woman by a couple of magnitudes, Toni can respect the hell out of that. “Can I approach?” she says grudgingly. 

“Please,” Toni says, and reaches out her hand, trying not to seem too eager. The mindless urges have died off somewhat; a couple of hours of sleep surrounded in those scents have done wonders to restore her self-control, but it’s still been so long since she’s had even a shadow of a true pack around her. 

“Toni, Natasha. Natasha, Toni,” Clint says, with an eyeroll. 

Natasha moves towards her like every step has to be dragged out. Her eyes are untrusting and guarded, her scent sharp with wariness. But she still comes, and even before she knows a goddamn thing about her, Toni finds herself liking her already. 

She turns her wrist up as Natasha gets closer, and she enjoys the clear shock and surprise that flashes through Natasha’s eyes. No one ever offers that much respect to a beta. She has to wonder if Natasha’s ever been the one to receive an offer of scent instead of constantly being expected to give it. 

Natasha tucks her hair back as she bends to inhale along Toni’s wrist, and when she straightens, her eyes are a little glassy. “You’re right,” she says over her shoulder to Clint, but her gaze doesn’t leave Toni’s. “She’s compatible.” Her lip curls a little then, clear challenge. “So when does she force us into it?”

Toni’s nose wrinkles into the beginnings of a snarl at that, and she takes a deep breath. “I don’t,” she says, and is proud of herself for how calm her tone remains. “I could, I suppose, but I decided a long time ago that it’s free will or not at all.”

Natasha’s head tips to one side and she folds her arms across her chest. “Have you ever compelled someone against their will?”

Toni’s stomach roils, and she swallows hard against a resurgence of bile, but makes herself keep her chin up and answer plainly. “Yes.”

“Why?” For some strange reason, Natasha seems more relaxed at her confession of compulsion. 

“I was young, newly matured, and being threatened with hunter packs,” she says.  _ Chin up, Miss Antonia. Speak clearly.  _ After twelve years, old Edwin Jarvis’s voice still gets her through difficult spots. God, she misses the wily old beta. Thinking of him in tandem with thoughts of Howard, however, does nothing to hold back the increasing churn of nausea in her gut. “My… victim wasn’t suited to me. Smelled wrong. I panicked and forced it anyway. I didn’t know what I was doing at the time, just that I had to stop them from calling in the kill squads.”

Natasha’s eyes have softened, and her arms are looser across her chest. “How long did you keep them under?”

“Two years,” she says, because it’s a number she keeps track of. “Two years. Five months. Two weeks. Three days. Seventeen hours. Eighteen minutes.”

“That’s… oddly specific,” Clint says softly, and she cuts her eyes to the side. She’d almost forgotten he was in the room, and she squeezes her eyes closed.  _ Get it together, Stark _ , she thinks.  _ You can’t lose awareness.  _

“It was an oddly specific situation,” she replies. 

“What happened after two years, five months, two weeks, three days, seventeen hours and eighteen minutes?” Natasha asks, and Toni swings her gaze back up. 

“They died. Aneurysm. Probably from fighting the compulsion. They were unsuited for me, but strong-willed. The strain was just too much, I guess.” Her stomach clenches hard, and she lifts Clint’s shirt unconsciously, trying to chase away the sting of death that always seems to be in her nose when she thinks of Howard. 

“If they fought that hard,” Natasha asks, and her arms are completely relaxed now, hanging loosely by her sides, “why didn’t you let them go earlier?”

“Because I didn’t want to run and I didn’t want to die. All I did was compel them to protect me. Out of the compulsion, I knew the first thing they’d do is call in hunters. I didn’t think I had any other choice but to keep them under.”

“Your father?” Clint’s voice is very, very soft and deadly. 

Toni’s not sure how to interpret that, whether it’s because she inadvertently killed him, or because that’s not how parents are supposed to treat their cubs, regardless of their status. “Yes.” Back to Natasha. “Is there anything else you’d like to know?” she asks, aims for politeness and doesn’t quite hit. “If I’ll do it again, maybe? If I’ve done it since? Did I enjoy it?”

“I’ve asked what I needed to ask,” Natasha says mildly. “I already know your answers. You’ll do it again if it’s your absolutely last resort, but otherwise, no, not if you can help it. You haven’t done it since and of course you didn’t enjoy it. Your face is practically green just talking about it. I’m satisfied.”

“Good for you,” Toni mutters and closes her eyes, rubbing her temples. “Do I pass inspection?”

Her answer comes in the form of a slender, pale wrist sliding under her nose, and Toni breathes it in, reeling in the doubled scent, fresh and clean, of the scent trail that pulled her like gravity. She manages to avoid grabbing Natasha’s wrist like she did Clint’s, though it’s a near thing. That’s a plus. Self-control clearly returning to previous levels. 

“You’ll do, I suppose,” Natasha says, once Toni’s done sniffing her skin. And it’s strange. Natasha’s expression hasn’t shifted by an eyelash, and her tone hasn’t warmed up more than a fraction, but Toni can clearly hear the uncertain playful note in her voice, see the softness around the knife-edge lines in her face. “You wanna do this now, or later?”

Toni blinks. “Just like that.”

Natasha shrugs. “Clint’s made up his mind already,” she says. “He’d let you claim him right now if you asked him. Me, I don’t care how good someone smells. I care about their honesty and respect.” A small smile. “You had both. That’s good enough for me. So now, or later?”

Toni shakes her head even before Natasha finishes her question. “I need somewhere more defended than here,” she says, and hesitates for a second before adding, “I have a place upstate. It’s pretty big. Natural forest, good hunting, all the amenities of civilization in a former military bunker I’ve upgraded with all sorts of nasty surprises for anyone trying to break in. … That is, if you want to go.”

Clint and Natasha share a long look and Toni gets the feeling they’re communicating wordlessly. “Sure,” Natasha says. “It’s been too long since I’ve been able to hunt properly. But there’s a condition.”

“Which is…?”

“There are two other shifters here we can’t leave alone. They’re pack, or as close to pack as you can get without a pack leader.” Clint rubs the back of his neck. “Both betas. Wanda and Pietro. Twins. They’re not much trouble. I don’t want to leave them behind.”

Toni wonders if she should worry about not noticing the scents of two other shifters in the building. She sniffs now, but can’t detect a whiff of them past the scent of Clint and now Natasha. “I can’t make promises, because it’s… I don’t know how to describe how I know what I need in a pack,” she says, frowning and searching for the right words. “So I won’t know until I get their scents. But they can at least come along.”

“Good enough for me,” Natasha says, with a satisfied nod. “When do we leave?”


	2. Chapter 2

****Natasha has never been more nervous in her life than the moment Clint locks the front door, turns on the lights, and coordinates the fastest clean-up and end-of-shift duties he’s ever done. She’s going to have to do another count of the bottles behind the bar next time, because she’s on auto-pilot and can’t be sure she’s making an accurate tally.

She hates the unknown, and a queen in the back room of Jackit, waiting for the place to close down and empty out, is the ultimate unknown. It's a threat, or salvation, and Natasha's edgy because she doesn't know which one. This queen, who smells like home, has the power to tear her apart from the place she clawed out here, with Clint and the twins.

 _Mouthy beta,_ Clint called her, fondly. But she’s heard that for most of her life, from her family, from the Red Room pack-home in Russia where she was taken as a child. Mouthy, sloppy, rude, disrespectful, out of line. She’s always resented the treatment betas receive, no matter how many times they tried to beat it out of her, no matter how many times she was told there was something wrong with her. Clint was the first and, to date, only alpha she’s ever met who gives less of a shit about what proper respect he’s due than she does.

It terrifies her that all that might be taken away.

Because Clint may think he can deny the queen, deny himself, but Natasha can see the writing on the wall. There’s a longing in his face, every time she catches him looking at the back hall, every time she sees the yellow gleam a little brighter in his eye. Clint’s hers already, mark be damned, and the resentment and terror burns like smouldering fire in Natasha’s chest.

And none of it might be lost. She has to try to remember that too, even though she can’t let herself hope that all will be well. That way lies disappointment.

But the queen is nothing like Natasha considered she might be. She’s never met one, has been told from her whelping that they’re twisted and insane mind-controllers, beyond any hope of redemption. They were her boogeymen at the Red Room. Toni’s nothing like any of the stories. The second _she_ turns her wrist to Natasha, an offering she’s _never_ received, with a soft smile and that beckoning, heavenly scent, Natasha knows she’s lost too.

But she’s her, and she won’t bare her throat to anyone she can’t at the very least respect.

There are no barbed chains strangling her thoughts, nothing but the smell of pack and family and belonging. There are no demands for reciprocity, no imperious arrogance, no sneering, no dissemblance. Natasha knows how to dig at soft spots without being so far out of line she’s throated on the spot, and she challenges Toni’s self-control, pokes at her sore spots, scoops into things Toni’d rather not talk about.

But she’s honest, even though it’s brutal. She’s not a pushover either, nothing like the helpless, broken omegas Natasha’s known. And when she finally gives Toni her wrist, she shudders at the butterfly brush of Toni’s nose along her skin.

She shoots a glance over her shoulder, sees Clint smirking with such a smug expression, she narrows her eyes at him, promising death and dismemberment later. He just smirks wider, but it doesn’t quite hide the awestruck, dumbfounded hope lining his eyes.

Natasha knows the feeling. Even if her face isn’t showing it, it’s filling her chest near to bursting.

**oOoOoOo**

Of course it isn’t as simple as just packing up and going. Not only is it four in the morning by now, Toni’s the only one who doesn’t need to work for a living which, honestly, she usually fails to consider. Her first instinct is to just buy the place out for the weekend, hand Clint a check for whatever they'd usually make plus bonus padding, and call it done, but she doesn't want to step on anyone's pride.

Clint leaves Toni and Natasha long enough to fetch Wanda and Pietro. Toni barely notices, because Natasha’s perched on the couch beside her, arm around her shoulders, and Toni’s nuzzling into her neck, nosing along her jaw, happy as a kitten. Natasha’s tense against her, but every time Toni tries to pull away, to respect her discomfort and give her some space, Natasha tightens her arm around Toni’s shoulders and keeps her against her neck.

It’s weird, but Toni can roll with it.

She nibbles along Natasha’s pulse, nips at her skin with gentle teeth and smooths her palms over her arms and shoulders, feels Natasha tremble under her caress, hears the catch in her breath. “Will you tell me what's wrong?” Toni asks softly, nudging Natasha's cheek with her nose. “I'm getting mixed signals, and if I'm too close or handsy for you, then I want to back off.”

A sigh shudders through Natasha's body, and she swipes at her face with the hand not clutching Toni in a white-knuckled death grip. “You're not,” she says. “It's not you. It's just… old memories. You don’t have to stop doing what you’re doing.”

Toni pulls away anyway, shuddering faintly as she stuffs the happy feel-good fog back into its box. “I kinda do,” she says gently, and threads her fingers through Natasha’s hair, smoothing it back from her face. “If you ever want to talk about it, though…”

Natasha closes her eyes, leans into Toni’s hand. “When you smell me, what do you smell?”

Toni frowns, but keeps petting her. “What do you mean? What scent, or..?”

“You can smell my status, can’t you?”

Right. Toni leans in once again, nostrils flaring delicately. She’s had her nose in Natasha’s scent all night, but hadn’t gone looking for her specific status. She breathes deep, letting the myriad threads trickle through her senses, then opens her eyes. Ah. Interesting. “You’re a tactician,” she says, and Natasha looks faintly pleased.

“Not many people recognize the subtleties of status anymore,” Natasha says. “Before I matured, my birth pack thought I would be an alpha. When I turned out to be a beta…” She shrugs, lifting one hand, palm upraised. “In the Red Room pack-home, betas are only a couple of steps removed from omegas, especially for alphas who don’t have access to the omegas and feel like rutting.”

“Jesus.” Toni presses a hand over her mouth. “Natasha, I’m–”

“Please don’t tell me you’re sorry.”

“Horrified. I was going to say horrified.” Because she is. She knew it was bad in pack-homes, with each successive generation reportedly worse than the one before, but somehow, Natasha puts into a few stark words a whole world of pain and misery.

Natasha shrugs. “I got out mostly unscathed,” she says. “Others weren’t so lucky.”

Toni bites her lip. “That still doesn’t mean—” She breaks off abruptly as a faint scuff outside the door alerts her to Clint’s return, and there are a pair of lighter footsteps under the more solid tread. Her shoulders tense and she turns into a more defensive position, half-instinct, half-fear.

It occurs to her again that she’s being entirely too trusting here, that she’s still in a strange place, surrounded by strange shifters. _It could still be a trick_ , whispers the paranoid part of her mind, and her hackles rise.

Unexpectedly, Natasha’s hand smooths up her spine, and Toni relaxes despite herself. “That’s Pietro and Wanda,” Natasha murmurs, as there’s a gentle knock on the door. “I know their foot falls.”

Toni nods once, clears her throat. “Come in,” she calls, and lets herself lean back against Natasha’s soothing hand, which stops to rest against her shoulder-blades.

Clint’s head pokes around the door, eyes wary but hopeful, and he lets the door swing open a little. Over his shoulder, Toni can see a shock of white-blond hair and a swirl of darker brown, and her nose twitches, trying to catch their scents. “You ready, Toni?”

“As I’m going to get,” she replies, and presses back harder against Natasha’s touch. She doesn’t give into the urge to fiddle with her hair, even though she wants to, because it’s always a crapshoot as to whether it’ll be taken as a sign of weakness or not. Friendly shifters or not, she can’t afford to show any weakness. Well, she corrects herself wryly, any _more_ weakness.

Clint steps aside, into the room, and Toni appreciates that he keeps his hands where she can see them, keeps his posture non-threatening. “Majesty,” he says, respectful and deferential, and sweeps his hand out, “I present two betas of my pack: Wanda and Pietro Maximoff.”

Toni inhales through her nose, forces her shoulders to settle out, lets her posture sink into the loose confidence she has to work so hard to transmute into alpha aggression. She slides off the couch, away from Natasha’s hand, and rises to her full height. She’s easily the shortest person in the room, but as she loosens the tight death-grip she keeps on her instincts, she becomes fully aware that none of them are going to match her for presence.

The room becomes awash in a tangle of scent-threads, trails of connection and loyalty, the building blocks of pack, and Toni samples them like they’re a fine wine, inhaling until her lungs protest.

Behind her, the first tentative bonds forged between her and Natasha shiver with unease, and it’s barely a conscious thought to let reassurance sing back down its length. The slightly stronger thread between her and Clint reverberates with the complex knots of his awe, his hope, his fear, his wariness, his protective instincts. Toni tilts her head, raises her eyes leisurely to meet his. The bright blue is pure gold, dark and shining.

She smiles, one corner of her mouth curving in satisfaction, and turns her attention to the Maximoff twins. Pietro, the white-blond, is clearly nervous but meets her eyes almost defiantly, whorls of gold spinning through the blue of his irises. Wanda struggles to raise her eyes from the floor, and her hands twist in white-knuckled gestures around each other at her waist.

Toni kind of likes them both already.

She doesn’t let it off the chain often, but there’s a predator in her, and it tastes the Maximoff twins’ fear and likes it just a little bit. Toni ruthlessly shoves that back down before it can do more than register in her head, and circles the twins, testing their scents. Neither of them hit her with the same intensity Clint and Natasha did, but they’re not bland and generic either. They’re unique, even mingled with Clint and Natasha’s scents, and Toni leans towards them, nostrils flaring to try and pinpoint it.

Pietro is so tight and tense, he’s practically vibrating. Wanda trembles in a completely different way, and anxiety makes her scent sharper, stronger, than her brother’s. Wanda smells like deep forest, cool and dark and mysterious, with mossy trunks and still, deep pools of icy-clear water, and it curls through Toni with satisfactory ease. She sways the other way, to turn her attention to Pietro. His scent is warm and bright, full of wind and sun, and makes her think of running tirelessly across a grassy plain under the summer sun.

Neither of them are _court,_ but they could be _pack._ If they wanted to be.

Toni steps back, and involuntarily glances at Clint. He’s watching her like a hawk, deceptively relaxed in stance but the tension is underscoring his scent. She arches an eyebrow at him, lets a small smile play across her mouth, lets it widen when he relaxes. She looks over her shoulder at Natasha, blinks at the drunken, dreamy expression on the beta’s face, but Natasha’s eyes clear swiftly when Toni focuses on her.

“You’re not court,” she says, turning back to the twins. “But I wasn’t expecting you to be. Courts aren’t that big, generally speaking.” She waits until Wanda manages to look up, finally, and is astonished that the wolf shine in her eyes is ice blue, not gold. Pietro, she notes, looks relieved at Toni’s assessment. It’s harder to read Wanda, but she doesn’t smell so strongly of anxiety anymore.

“Do we not smell right?” Pietro asks, an eyebrow arching delicately into his hairline. He reaches out for his sister, and Wanda grips his hand tight, staring at Toni with those pale, beautiful eyes.

It’s not a hard decision. “You smell fine,” Toni says gently, and lifts both her arms, turning her wrists towards the twins. “You smell like pack. I’d be honored to run with you, if you choose to run with me.”

Natasha’s quiet sigh of relief is drowned out by Clint’s louder exhalation, but Toni ignores them for the moment. Neither of the twins look like they know what to do, but Wanda tentatively lifts her hand to touch Toni’s wrist. “May I?” she murmurs.

“Please.” Toni’s eyes flutter closed when Wanda’s nose presses against the pulse point of her wrist, another empty place inside her head filling up with the warm foundation, the faint hints of potential pack-bond. After a moment, the warmth blooms along her left arm as well, and her hand curls around Pietro’s cheek as he scents her too.

“You smell familiar,” Wanda murmurs, and tucks her hair behind her ear, but doesn’t lift her head away from Toni’s arm.

“Like a sister, or a cousin,” Pietro chimes in, likewise staying bent over Toni’s arm.

She sighs, deep and contented, and feels more than hears Natasha and Clint move towards her. _God,_ it feels good to know she doesn’t have to be alone anymore. It’s early, and no actual bonds have been formed, but when Natasha’s hand slides into her hair, and Clint’s arm slips around her waist, and the twins are still nosing along the sensitive skin of her inner forearms, she knows with a certainty she’s _never_ felt that it’s only a matter of time now.

“What now?” Natasha murmurs, and Toni stifles a purr when Natasha’s thumb rubs gently behind her ear.

“Now,” she says, and her voice is heavy with contentment, “we see if you four are satisfied with my ability to provide for you. Starting with me renting your club out for as long as this takes. Don’t want your employees to starve, after all.”

**oOoOoOo**

Toni’s “place upstate” is far bigger than Clint thought it would be. Even though she gave a very specific description, he still somehow thought it would be a tiny bit of land, where they could chase rabbits and run through the trees and maybe end up curled in a pack-pile at the end of the day.

When Toni says “pretty big”, she means “fucking enormous”.

All Clint can see from the road, nose practically pressed to the window, is forbidding gates and high stone walls topped with barbed wire and rounded domes he thinks are automated turrets spaced at even intervals. Behind the solid stone is a thickly forested area and his nose twitches involuntarily, as if he can smell the game through the bulletproof glass.

Toni’s driver, a large, jovial human named Happy Hogan, stops the van at the main gates long enough to punch in a code on the keypad, press his thumb to a small touchscreen that slides open, and finally present his eye for a retinal scanner. Clint’s impressed with the security measures, to say the least. And a quick glance at Natasha shows she’s just as satisfied, if the faint surprise and approval in her eyes are anything to judge by.

The gates swing open smoothly with a rattle of metal and not even a hint of rusted creaking. Happy puts the vehicle back into drive and continues along the paved drive, through a stand of close-growing pines. Clint’s breath fogs the glass and he impatiently swipes it away to go back to staring, just in time to see the Stark compound come into view.

God. _Damn_.

A sprawling complex emerges from beyond the trees as the van rounds a gentle curve, and Clint’s jaw drops open. The Carnival’s manor, where he had been born and raised and eventually kicked out, had been the biggest pack-home he’d known of, until now. It’s sleek and modern, and looks fragile with all its glass walls and reflective surfaces, but Clint has a sneaking suspicion it’d probably take military-grade hardware to so much as dent the polish on the metal skeleton.

The compound is clearly marked by the Stark Industries sign implanted in the concrete of the building, indicating it as a former research site for SI’s military applications division, but it’s fading and scratched, fresh chips dug out of the concrete around the brass edging, like someone had tried to pry it up and failed. A broad field stretches out to either side of the building and… is that a goddamn landing strip? Christ. This place really does have everything so far, and they haven’t even been inside yet.

“Welcome to my pack-home,” Toni says softly from the front seat, leaning forward to peer at it through the windshield. “JARVIS should have turned the lights on and supervised the bots’ cleaning, so once we unpack the groceries, all should be in order for us to just…” She trails off with a vague gesture, sweeping her palm to indicate everything in sight.

“JARVIS?” Natasha asks.

“My AI. Well, our AI, if you choose to stay.” Toni sighs faintly. “I brought him online almost six years ago, and transferred him here a few weeks back to … I don't know why, honestly. The pack-home has never been high on my priority list, but recently, it's been difficult to ignore the denning instinct.”

“I’ll get the groceries, boss,” Happy says, and bypasses the main doors in favor of driving around to the side, where what looks like a cross between a service entrance and a loading bay is set into the wall. “You folks just go ahead and do your thing. I’ll handle unpacking the car.”

“Thank you, Happy,” Toni murmurs as the car is put into park.

“This looks well-prepared,” Natasha says, popping her seat belt and sliding open the door on her side. “You obviously put a lot of thought into this. Your defenses are formidable. It’s a lovely pack-home.”

Toni visibly preens under the praise, shoulders rolling back and chin lifting. “I’ve been working on it for over a year,” she says, and unbuckles her belt. Clint scrambles to get out of the van in time to open her door for her, and she blinks up at him in surprise, hand still outstretched for the inside door handle. “What are you doing?”

There are a thousand things he can say to that, and more than half migrate to the tip of his tongue, ranging from offended to snarky, but he ruthlessly quashes them back down. He grins at her, throws her a smarmy wink, and reaches out to take her hand in a gesture of chivalry and support. “What, don’t think alphas can have manners, majesty?”

“It’s probably more surprise that _you_ have manners,” Natasha says, coming around the back of the vehicle to join them, as Toni steps out, fingers interlocking with Clint’s. Natasha takes Toni’s other hand, or maybe Toni takes hers, and they move away from the vehicle. “I meant it, though. You’ve obviously put a lot of thought into this place.”

“It helped take the edge off the urge to find pack,” she says, and takes a deep breath of the air. Clint can almost watch the layers of stress slough away from her as she lifts her nose to the breeze and lets the wind ruffle through her hair. It’s a profound shift, awe-inspiring and reverent, to watch Toni change from the guarded omega on his couch to a loose, relaxed, regal queen on her home territory. The sunlight on her face and in her hair gleams, and the wind reddens her cheeks just a little. “I admit, I may have gone a little overboard.”

“It’s perfect,” Clint says, and whether in that moment he means the pack-home or the queen before him, he himself can’t tell.

**oOoOoOo**

Pietro and Wanda join them less than an hour later, heralded by the noisy complaints of the engine of Wanda’s ancient car long before it’s visible on the drive. Toni is doing her best to not be a nervous wreck, but isn’t sure how well she’s succeeding. She’s never wanted anything to work out more in her life, and her only consolation is that Clint and Natasha don’t smell nearly as put-together and confident as they’re presenting themselves.

JARVIS is the only thing keeping her from collapsing into chaos, and not for the first time, she praises whatever deity put his code into her head. He’s in sentinel alpha mode, his primary protocol function, and his quiet self-assurance is doing wonders to keep her grounded in the presence of her court-to-be. But it’s not enough to stop her nerves from jittering like live wires.  

It occurs to her that, for all she’s a queen, the heart of a pack, she hasn’t the first fucking clue how to hold a pack together.

She’s never been one to run, but she flees at the earliest chance, taking advantage of Clint and Natasha’s distraction with the kitchen and the twins’ choosing a room and settling in to make a tactical retreat somewhere quiet and safe. So instead of overseeing the coming-together of the five shifters in the house, she’s perched on a rock in the broad nature room of the pack-home, far from the scent and sound of her guests, listening to the filtration system quietly gurgling in the room’s tiny indoor pond.

She closes her eyes, crosses her legs, and tries to regain her lost equilibrium with the meditation techniques her mother taught her. Maria Carbonell hadn't been a queen, but she might have been in a different world, a more ancient world. And failed queen or not, her mother had done her best to instill Toni with the skills and understanding queens were supposed to know.

_Breathe in._

Toni inhales deeply, in through her nose, filling her lungs until it feels like they’re going to burst, and holds it. _Feel the stress. Feel the tension. Can you feel it,_ cucciola _? Sink it into your chest, into your breath. Have you done that, Antonia?_

Si, _Mama,_ she thinks as her chest begins to hurt with the dull ache of minor oxygen debt. _I have._

_Then let your breath out, and let it carry your fears and worries with it as it leaves your body._

_Breathe out._

Toni exhales slowly, letting the tension drain from her as she does. It’s almost painful, to let her shoulders unknot, to smooth the spiky adrenaline jolts from her body. Too long on the edge, she figures, inhaling again and repeating the process of pushing the stress from her body, relaxing in stages each time she breathes out. Too many years of looking over her shoulder. Too many years of Howard’s ghost dogging her steps.

 _We have words,_ cucciola. _Remember them always. Repeat after me, now:_ The race is not won by the swift.

Toni’s mouth curves into a smile at the memory, and she settles more comfortably on the rock. “Nor battle to the strong,” she murmurs. “Wealth is not a right of the brilliant, and the learned do not always deserve favor.” It’s been years since she’s had the security to voice the Queen’s Proverbs aloud, but they rise easily from her memory, and roll with surety from her mouth. “Blessed are the queens who seek wisdom and understanding, for they are more precious than rubies; they are trees of life for those who shelter beneath them, and those who cleave to them will likewise be blessed.”

Breathe in.

_These are now called the Heretical Verses, Antonia, for they teach of the time that was, the time before this, when an omega served the pack instead of being slaved to it. When a queen was treasured and defended, for she treasured and defended her pack. The world is different now, and this is why I teach you when your father is away on business. Will you recite the Queen’s Song for me, carina?_

“A queen’s love reaches the heavens, her faithfulness to the skies,” Toni murmurs, so deep in the memory of her mother she can almost smell the scent of her perfume. “Her righteousness is as tall as a mountain, and her justice as deep as the ocean. She preserves her people with unfailing devotion. The pack finds refuge in the cool shadow she casts, and feasts from the abundance of her den. For she gives freely from the river of her bounty, a gift of life and light.”

She’s aware she’s not alone before she finishes the verse — JARVIS has chimed softly to indicate an open door, and the scents of Clint and Natasha waft towards her — but she doesn’t open her eyes until she’s done. The Proverbs and the Song have done what even JARVIS could not do: recenter her, remind her of what she is, _who_ she is. Before she opens her eyes, she can feel the change in herself, the certainty and confidence rolling through her like thunder and trumpets.  

“That was beautiful,” Natasha says, oddly hushed. She’s sitting across the tiny pond, beside Clint, with both hands looped around a knee, staring at Toni with unreadable eyes. “What was it?”

Toni’s smile is soft, a little uncertain. It feels like a violation of her mother’s trust, the sacred safety of the queen, drilled into her head from the cradle, but she clears her throat anyway. “Two parts of the Three Laws of the Queen. Proverbs of the Queen and the Queen’s Song,” she says. The words are resonant, thrumming with the potential for _command,_ and she only realizes it when both Natasha and Clint reel as though smacked in the face, and she yanks her lax control back into an ironclad grip. “ _Shit_ , sorry,” she says, and her face is turning red, but at least her voice has lost the imperious edge. “Didn’t mean to do that.”

Clint, dazed and unfocused, shakes his head briskly like a dog shaking off water. “Christ,” he says, but there’s a good-natured tone behind the grumble. “If that’s your casual whammy, babe, I gotta tell you, not really looking forward to experiencing the full thing. You pack a wallop.”

Toni unfolds her legs and slides off her rock, padding around the shore of the not-really-a-pond to join them, face flaming hot enough to feel like lava. Her eyes dart to Natasha, guilty and worried. Natasha, for her part, just arches an eyebrow back at Toni, quizzical and nonplussed. “Hopefully, I’ll never have to use it,” Toni mutters, and slows to a halt just outside of arm’s reach, mindful of her lack of invitation into their personal space.

Clint stares at her, non-comprehension plain in his expression, and frowns in confusion. Natasha just rolls her eyes, leans forward far enough to snag Toni’s knee, and yanks Toni towards her. “Consider yourself invited, _solnishko.”_

Toni doesn’t yelp; she manages to hold that back, but she does pinwheel her arms as her balance is abruptly shifted, and she half-falls, half-collapses across their laps. With their hands guiding her down, she ends up with her legs slung over Natasha’s knees, and her head pillowed on Clint’s thigh. She blinks up at him, but he just grins back and brushes his fingers across her forehead, dragging stray strands of hair out of her eyes. “You really are a queen,” he says, in soft wonderment.

“All my life,” she says lightly, and closes her eyes, folds her hands across her stomach as his hands thread gently into her hair, as Natasha’s glide around her calves. “Which is sadly sheltered, I’m afraid. I don’t know much beyond the basics of pack structures. Are alphas and betas taught things like that, mantras to help center you?”

Clint’s hands still in her hair for just a second, and Natasha’s hands miss a stroke on her legs. Toni keeps her eyes closed, schools her expression to stay pleased and content even though she’s wincing a little.

“Not in the Red Room,” Natasha says softly. “In the Red Room, our mantra is this: _I am not born into defeat. Failure does not course in my veins. I am not a sheep waiting for the shepherd’s crook. I am a wolf, and I will not listen when the sheep bleat and sob, for their failure is a contagion. I will not end in the slaughterhouse of failure. I will succeed, because it is the only valid choice before me.”_

“Harsh,” Clint says after the silence stretches for a few minutes, and resumes petting Toni’s hair. Toni blinks, but lifts a hand from her stomach to reach to Natasha. Natasha’s face is cool and collected, but the tight grip on Toni’s fingers puts the lie to her calmness.

A snarl rises, curling her lips and baring her teeth, rage circling like a stalking predator right below the surface of her serenity. “You’re not there anymore,” Toni says, squeezing Natasha’s hand until the other woman looks up at her, and Toni gives her a fierce look, lets a little bit of the queen bleed into her eyes. _No one will ever hurt you like that again,_ Toni thinks, firm and certain.

“I left that behind at the Red Room,” Natasha says, and her eyes are wolf-gold, strangely hard and strangely soft all at once. “Now, my motto is _never underestimate your strength, never overestimate your weakness._ ” Her head tilts slightly then, spilling scarlet-gold over her shoulder, and Toni reaches her other hand up to stroke through it. “Or at least it was,” Natasha continues, and chews on her lower lip, watching Toni. “We’ll have to see what it becomes now.”

Wordless, Toni gently tugs Natasha until she’s folded over Toni’s chest, and threads her arms over and through Natasha’s. She feels rather than hears the faint sigh shudder through Natasha’s body, and Toni tightens her embrace. Through the shimmer of Natasha’s hair, Toni looks up at Clint. “How about you?”

His smile is lopsided, but fond, and his other hand comes to link with Toni’s in the shine of Natasha’s hair. “The Carnival wasn’t that kind of a pack-home,” he says, offhanded. “And I wasn’t there long enough for me to learn whatever lockstep chant the hunter packs sing to themselves at night.” His grin goes a little rueful, a little self-deprecating then, and he scratches his nose. “I did pick something up a few years back, though,” he admits. “It’s a bit silly, but fuck it. After… I left, it just seemed to fit. And I had nothing else.”

“Tell us,” Natasha murmurs, and turns her head so she’s facing Clint, still curled up on Toni’s chest.

Clint sighs, a long, shoulder-shaking sigh, and shoves a hand through his hair, leaving the spikes in even greater disarray. “Don’t laugh at me,” he says, and closes his eyes with another sigh. “It rhymes.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Toni murmurs, and Natasha makes a dreamy noise against her collarbone that sounds like assent.

“ _Now this is the Law of the Jungle_ ,” Clint begins, his voice rising and falling with the cadence, and Toni blinks, because she knows this poem very well. _“As old and as true as the sky. And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk, the Law runneth forward and back. For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.”_

Toni disentangles a hand from Natasha’s hair and reaches up to run her fingertips over Clint’s cheek, and his eyes snap open, shining burnished gold in the nature room’s light. “My mother used to read me that poem,” she says softly. “Kipling might have been a halfbreed, she said, but he had a talent for describing the essence of the pack. It’s fitting.”

“It made more sense to me than half the shit the Carnival alphas like to spout,” he mumbles, letting Natasha and Toni pull him down into their embrace. “I was always the weird one, cos nothing felt right to me. Not killing other shifters for their status, not listening to whatever jackass alpha managed to beat the others into submission. Not seeing omegas in chains.”

Toni folds an arm around his shoulders, shifting awkwardly until she's cradling them both. Their mingled scents surround her, cushion her, and she breathes deeply, closing her eyes as pressure builds behind her eyes. With her senses blown this wide open, she can all but literally see things moving, shifting, rearranging between them, fragile bonds strengthening in brightening hues of red and violet and gold and blue. Something breaks, soft and painless, in her head, and she knows it's the restraints so carefully constructed, the chains and locks keeping the queen hidden.

 _The final test a queen must face,  Antonia,_ says her mother's memory, _is when she can no longer hide who she is. When you have found your Primes, when you have accepted them wholly, all these tricks I have taught you to appear as an alpha will be useless. The queen cannot be  satisfied once she has had a taste of what she can become. You must be careful,_ carina, _because shifters may have many partners over their lives, but bonds like this for an omega, for a queen, are hard to break and impossible to replace._

“Dammit,” she says softly, because she knows she's lost now. She's been falling down this path since the scents first caught her nose, but now it's far too late for her to reverse course. And having one on either side, smelling so good and nuzzling into her collarbone, really isn't helping her equilibrium.

Natasha stirs, lifts her head. “Toni?” Her voice is muzzy, like she’s half-asleep, but her eyes are dark and gleaming, and her hand slips over Toni's stomach, toying with the snap on her jeans. Toni's breath catches as Clint brushes his nose over the scent gland on his side of her neck, and warmth blooms low and sudden in her belly.

Just for a second, God help her, she considers giving into the temptation and let them take her there and then on the floor of the nature room. To give in and take them back, own them and be owned. A pang of need, sharp and harsh, slams through her, vibrates down the shining, brightening threads between them. She bites back the growl rumbling in the back of her throat, because they’re both responding to the bonds, to her body screaming for heat-release.

 _Be very sure,_ her mother’s memory says suddenly, _but do not rush. My darling Antonia, I cannot regret letting your father take me as his mate because I have you now, and you are more precious than life to me. But Howard and I … we were not compatible, even though it seemed we would be. And I will not regret it, but it was a mistake._

“ _Stop.”_ It’s only a bare hint of command, and Toni already hates herself for using it, but she has to stop this before it gets out of hand. When both Clint and Natasha freeze and move away, she scrambles from beneath them and retreats a few feet away, trying to catch her breath.

“Change your mind?” Clint’s tone is casual, but Toni can hear the bewildered hurt beneath it. And when she looks at Natasha, Natasha has become still and cold as stone, with nothing betrayed in her face or posture, but her eyes are wolfen and hard.

“No,” Toni says, and scrubs her palms hard over her face. “Christ almighty, no, I haven’t changed my mind. I’m not _going_ to change my mind.”

Natasha blinks, long and slow, and the gold fades from her eyes. “Then why?”

“Because,” Toni says quietly, “I may be sure, but I don’t know how much of that is biological and how much is…” She trails off, then sighs. “I’m sure,” she says firmly. “I’m just not sure leaping straight into a life bond is wise.” The next words are hard to force out, but she does it anyway. “My mother was omega. She might have been a queen. But she let herself bond with my father, and it killed her instincts. It eventually killed her, and nearly killed me when she was dead and couldn’t protect me anymore. I’d rather not risk that, and I certainly don’t want to inflict that on any cubs I might have in the future.”

Clint blinks, starts, opens his mouth, then snaps it shut again when Natasha raises her palm to him to wait. “That’s understandable,” Natasha says with a slow nod. “You’re right. It might be best to give it a little bit of time.” With fluid grace, she gets to her feet and dusts her hands against the material of her pants, then pads towards Toni, careful and slow.

When Toni doesn’t stop her, Natasha threads a hand into Toni’s hair. Toni’s mouth goes a little dry and she swallows at Natasha’s expression, a hungry wolf with her eyes on a steak. “You don’t know us,” Natasha says gently, and brushes the thumb of her free hand under Toni’s eye with a sort of tenderness that brings a lump to Toni’s throat. “You know you need us, but you don’t know if you can trust us. And that’s valid. Isn’t it, Clint?” she adds, turning to shoot a look Toni can’t see over her shoulder.

Clint clears his throat and climbs to his feet. “Yeah,” he says, honest and bald. “It’s valid, babe. Tasha’s right. Hell, I don’t think it’s been a full twenty-four hours yet since you stalked me through the streets of New York—” And the side of his mouth tilts up with such an unapologetically smug grin, Toni can’t help but scoff and roll her eyes and grin in return.

His face changes as Toni watches him move towards her and Natasha, watches a vulnerability and an awe creep across his cheeks and forehead like a ghost, and his voice is a little choked when he reaches out to cup the cheek Natasha isn’t and says, “Jesus fuckin’ Christ, Toni. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t sure. I haven’t waited for a goddamn thing in my life, but we can wait for this. So we’ll take some time. Probably the smart thing to do anyway, right?”

Natasha scoffs. “And here I thought you wouldn’t know what a smart thing was until it bit you on the ass,” she says with an arched eyebrow. “I have a thought, though, Toni. Would you be willing to do a pack bond yet?”

Toni tilts her head, considering. “It’s not a bad idea,” she says slowly, then shudders finely when Natasha’s fingers sweep over the shell of her ear, and Clint’s hand drifts around to her neck at the base of her skull, and between her shoulderblades. “Stop it, You’re terrible distractions.”

“Sorry,” Clint says, sounding not sorry at all, but he drops his hand away from her and shoves it into his pocket. “You were saying?”

Toni rubs a hand over her chin thoughtfully, leaning slightly into Natasha’s hands whenever they travel across her shoulders, back and throat, eyes half-slitting in contentment. “Pack bond should be okay,” she says, a little more throatily than she’d like, but the glare she levels at Natasha only gets her a small, mysterious smile and a shrug of Natasha’s left shoulder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **A Note on the Mantras & Mottos**  
> Much of the spiritual worldbuilding in this shifter ‘verse is inspired by Christian mythology and Biblical verses. While I (ficlicious) am not particularly religious, I find that the Bible can be full of interesting verses and parables, and we’ve adapted or modified some of them to fit more with the dynamics of this AU. In each chapter where modified verse appears, I’ll provide a full listing of inspirational material. 
> 
> _Toni’s Queen’s Mantras_  
>  “Proverbs of the Queen” is a slightly tailored Ecclesiastes 9:11 mixed with Proverbs 3:13-18. “The Queen’s Song” draws very heavily from Psalms 36:5-9. 
> 
> _Natasha’s Mottos_  
>  The section beginning with “I am not born into defeat” is a modification of an excerpt from “The Scroll Marked III”, from Og Mandino’s _The Greatest Salesman in the World_. The second motto is an inspirational quote I can’t find a credible source for, so I’ll leave it as Anonymous/Unknown for now.
> 
>  _Clint’s Poem_  
>  Is the first verse of Ruyard Kipling’s “The Law of the Jungle”, which appeared in The Jungle Book, amongst other places.


	3. Chapter 3

Life at the pack-home settles into a routine fairly quickly. Toni takes to Pietro and Wanda like they’re siblings separated at birth. Wanda is still fairly shy and reserved, but she always has been, but Pietro and Toni are bosom buddies, lifelong BFFs within minutes of an actual conversation that doesn’t require a complicated dance of sniffing each other’s scent and growling at each other.

Clint gradually becomes certain that it's Toni’s and Natasha's goal to drive him completely insane. In the two weeks that follow their conversation by the indoor lake — an indoor lake, for chrissake! — Toni stays at arm's length physically, leaning into their casual touches and caresses, nuzzling into them lazily and relaxing in their arms, but always pulling back when the tension thickens and desire thrums between them.

Natasha's scent has changed too, somewhere in there, a hint of … something new, something that was definitely not there before. She’d always smelled good to him, like home, pack, safety, but he’d never smelled mate in her scent before now.  

It doesn’t help, it really doesn’t, that Natasha’s taken it upon herself to teach Toni how to fight. Clint has become disturbingly addicted to watching them wrestle like eels in the personal gym in what he’s mentally dubbed the communal wing of the pack-house, away from the private rooms and suites. And while he approves of Toni learning how to fight, it has the unfortunate downside of magnifying their scents until he’s sure he could be on the fucking moon, and still have it in his nostrils. 

He’s always had excellent self-control, far more than most other alphas he's met, but waiting for Toni, his queen, makes him feel raw and exposed. He's an alpha, made for protection and fighting and fucking, a bundle of nerves and pheromones stuffed into skin and meat and painted with a veneer of civility. And on top of that, he's a hunter alpha, observant and wary and meant to be moving, action, doing.    
But he’s going to be patient, he’s going to be respectful, because in his opinion, that’s what an alpha should goddamn be. Because it’s the polar opposite of his former packmates at the Carnival, and he knows he wants to be nothing like them. He's happy to fidget like a kid impatient for Christmas morning, primed and prepared, and he's going to wait. 

It’s goddamn maddening. But he clings to restraint and control by the tips of his claws, because he’s not an animal, and he can handle constantly being in the presence of two shifters who smell like mates without snapping. 

Even if it kills him. 

At this point, he's afraid it might. 

He whines discontentedly as he catches their scents again, and shoots a dire glare at the air vents, from which he’s sure the scents are emanating. “Is there anywhere in this fucking place I can’t smell them?” he mutters to himself, shoving both hands in his hair and yanking, a jolt of pain to recenter his attention. 

“If I may,” a smooth, vaguely British voice cuts in from everywhere and nowhere at once, and Clint’s halfway shifted for battle before he remembers JARVIS, “you may find the library suitable for your needs. Ma’am possesses several rare tomes that require climate controlled environments. The library is a closed system.”

He’s still not a hundred percent sure JARVIS is actually a person, no matter how many times Toni’s explained it to him, but right now, he doesn’t care. If it gets him away from the scents ripping his self-control to shreds for a little while, he’ll take advice from a smartphone app. “Where’s the library?”

In response, soft lights begin to glow down the hall. “I will illuminate your path for you, sir,” JARVIS says deferentially, and Clint pauses with his head tilted, because he could swear he’s hearing omega cadences in the AI’s voice, pitched to soothe an agitated alpha. 

“Thank you,” he mutters, and starts down the hall in a hurried trot with the scents of Toni and Natasha trailing after him. After a moment of following the lights in silence, he glances up at the ceiling. “What, exactly, is your function here?”

“I believe ma’am designed me to fulfill the role of pack, in whatever capacity she needed,” JARVIS says. “My primary protocols use the sentinel alpha role as a basis, and I am responsible for maintaining security and sanctity of the Queen’s pack-home and private den.”

Both of Clint’s eyebrows go up. “Your primary protocols?”

“Yes, sir,” JARVIS says pleasantly. “Ma’am has programmed me with secondary scout beta and guardian omega modes as well.”

Clint blinks. Well, guess that explains the omega cadence he thought he’d heard. “And you can just switch between them?”

“Yes, sir,” JARVIS replies. “Consciously or not, I believe ma’am designed me with her future as a queen in mind, as I may respond to any number of situations and scenarios with appropriate behavior and language.”

It’s such an alien thought, three different statuses in one, that it takes Clint a few moments to wrap his head around it. But on the heels of the struggle to comprehend comes the certainty that he doesn’t need to understand how it works to be goddamn impressed and proud of how smart Toni is. And maybe just a little intimidated and a lot turned on. 

He’s halfway turned around to find Toni and Natasha when he stops, swears violently, and thumps his forehead against the wall. “How much farther to the library?” he asks plaintively. 

“Not far, sir,” JARVIS replies, and Clint might be imagining it, but he thinks the omega tones have gotten just a little bit deeper. 

**oOoOoOo**

The smell of Natasha’s scent so intimately mingled with hers from their sparring session is driving her fucking crazy. 

Toni stands in the shower, forehead pressed against the cool tile, and watches the  sudsy water swirl around her bare feet. She closes her eyes and reaches for calm, but calm is eluding her today. Even with neutralizing shampoos and soaps, she can’t get the scent out of her nose, out of her head. Natasha and Clint have permeated through down to her bones, and there isn’t enough de-scenter in the world on days like today. 

When she’s rid herself of as much of the scent as she thinks she’s going to manage, she shuts the water off, steps out, and towels off. As she’s scrubbing the terry towel through her hair, she stares at her golden eyes in the mirror and tries to remember the last time she saw them blue. She eyes herself for another minute as she finishes with her hair, then sighs through her nose and turns away to hang the towel back up on the shower rod.

Taking things slow is all well and fine, but the situation is getting untenable. She needs to figure out what the fuck she’s doing, and she needs to figure it out soon.

She hauls clothes out of her closet, pulls them on with far less care than she usually takes with her wardrobe coordination, and elects to finger comb her damp hair into loose waves to let it dry naturally. One way or another, she needs to solve this, and she has become painfully aware that she’s failing to know how to do it on her own. “J, where are Natasha and Clint?”

“Natasha is in the kitchen preparing a lunch,” JARVIS says promptly, “and Clint has taken refuge in the library.”

“The library?” she says, with a blink of surprise. “What’s he doing in there?”

“Escaping the smell of two potential mates, I would imagine,” JARVIS replies, and Toni scowls at the recrimination she knows she’s not imagining in his tone. 

“Let Natasha know, please, and show her how to find the library,” Toni says, and exits her suite. The library is as good a place as any to start deciding how their pack, their court, should be handled.

**oOoOoOo**

They’ve recently showered and drowned themselves in de-scenter, but Clint still smells Toni and Natasha the second they walk into the library, and every nerve ending lights on fire again. He sighs and sets his book aside, because no matter how thoroughly and fascinatingly Maria Stark detailed the original roles of alpha, beta and omega sub-statuses in a healthy pack, stuff he damned well wasn’t ever taught at his birth pack-home, he’s not going to be able to concentrate on it now that their scents are back in his nose.

Toni and Natasha are carefully arms-length from each other, and Toni has to visibly restrain herself from trotting right on up to his side as they halt well out of lunging distance from him. It soothes his fraying, jangling nerves just a little to see that they’re just as edgy and frustrated as he is.

Silence stretches for a long moment, tense and uncertain. 

And Toni clears her throat. “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing,” she says, flat and low, and shoves her hands into her hair, fisting them tight against the long strands. “I’ve been trying and trying to figure it out, but I can’t… settle on what to do. I need help. I need…” She breaks off abruptly, closes her eyes tight, swallows convulsively. “I need you to be my Primes and help me. I need you.”

Clint clears his throat, finds Natasha and Toni staring intently at him, and grimaces because their gazes are a little too intense for his equilibrium. He picks up his book again, smooths a hand over the cover, and then holds it out to Toni uncertainly. “I’ve been reading this,” he says. “Your mother wrote it. There’s all kinds of things in there, about shifters and queens and packs. I was just getting into the history of the Carbonell queens when you came in. Maybe there’s something in here that can help you?”

Toni reaches out hesitantly, and her hand brushes over his as she takes it from him, screaming along his skin like wild lightning. “Okay,” she breathes. “This, at least, is a start, right?”

Natasha moves towards him, brushes a hand down his spine, and he whuffs quietly in response. It better not just be a start, he thinks, because if this goes on much longer, it’s going to be the absolute fucking end of him.

**oOoOoOo**

“My mother,” Toni begins, laying her fingertips on the cover of Maria Stark’s diary, “left me a history that is certainly nothing like anything we grew up learning. She left me lore, and truth, and customs. In this book,” and she taps it lightly with one finger, “is the traditional method the Carbonell queens, traced from the line of the  _ gens _ Valerii of the Roman Empire, used to bind their packs to them. It’s full of very significant symbolism and ritualistic elements. It’s beautiful, really.”

She lays her hand flat on the book, and she inhales sharply through her nose. She can almost feel the weight of the ages in its pages, one of the heaviest burdens anyone’s ever going to bear in this world. She shakes her head slightly, and her hair falls into her eyes. She tucks it back, and looks up. Pietro and Wanda, Clint and Natasha, are all watching her, the twins with wide, expectant eyes, Clint and Natasha with neutrality. 

“The Carbonell pack-bond ritual is beautiful. But every queen does things differently,” she continues, soft as a sigh. “So I’m going to chuck the whole fucking works out the window and fly by the seat of my pants, because I’m allergic to formality and I wouldn’t know tradition if it bit me in the ass. Any objections to me making this up as I’m going along?”

Natasha laughs, and the sound shivers down Toni’s spine like bells ringing. She glances sharply at her, but Natasha’s just looking pleased. Pleased and amused. “No,  _ solnishko, _ ” she says with the widest smile Toni’s seen to date. “No objections.”

“Works for me,” Clint says shortly, and folds his arms across his chest. Toni sighs faintly, because she’s starting to wonder if he’s ever going to come down off the hypervigilance ledge. She sways towards him, but Natasha’s already there, laying a hand on his shoulder that he covers with one of his own. 

“We have no objections either,” Wanda says, and Pietro nods. 

“Okay.” She closes her eyes again, takes a deep breath and lets it out. When she’s done with the exhale, she opens her eyes and lets the wolf bleed into them. “I am Toni Stark,” she says, and lets just an edge, a bare sliver, of command throb in her voice, watches them react to it, swaying on their feet and going dreamy-eyed for just a moment before their eyes clear again. “I am a queen omega. In the pack, my word is law. My will is iron. But I’ll try to keep the rules to a bare minimum. The first and most important rule is this:  _ no consent, no fucking _ . I don’t care if it’s heat or not. No one mates against their will. End of fucking story.”

“So to speak,” Natasha murmurs, and Toni shoots her a dirty look that makes her grin wider.

“In return, this is what I have to offer. I have a whammy. I don’t like to use it. I will not use it unless I absolutely need to, in defense of myself or my pack. I will keep you safe. I will kill for you, though I don’t like doing that either. I will feed you when you’re hungry, care for you when you’re sick, hunt with you and run with you and howl with you. You will be pack, you will be family. You’ll get respect and compassion and affection, and all you have to do in return is give it to everyone else. If you can do that, you can stay.”

“ _ Da _ ,” Pietro says with a tiny smile. “We can do that, Toni. But… I thought this was supposed to be hard, these demands of a queen’s. Nothing you’ve said is hard to do.”

Toni shifts her attention to him, and eyes him the same way she eyed Natasha. Again, all she gets in return is a smile. “The Carbonell ritual has bloodletting with a big silver knife,” she says sweetly. “It’s not too late to change to that one if I need to.”

**oOoOoOo**

They end up outside, naked and shivering in the cold, shifting into their wolves and scenting the air. Toni stands in the center of the other four as they shift and find their positions in the pack around her. She can almost scent the changes taking place within them, scent the fragile, nascent bonds strengthening with every playful bite, every pounce, every growl and yip. 

It builds and builds until it’s a glorious crescendo that crashes down on her from above, a crushing wave that lets her breathe without drowning, catches her without taking her under. 

She barks once, feeling so energetic and strong, she’s surprised her eyes aren’t spitting lightning.  **_We hunt._ **

They take a deer, each moving as part of a whole, bringing it down as if they’ve done this together for years. In the heat of blood across her tongue, the last of the chains holding herself in check shatter in Toni’s heart, and the Queen sings free until she has to surface from the wolf with a gasp, crouching naked and bloody with her head tilted up to the sky. 

She reaches to either side, seeking without looking, and cool fur slides under each hand as Natasha and Clint respond and come to her side. She leans right, buries her face in sandy-brown fur that smells like earth and wind and home, breathes deep.  

Clint whines, and butts her gently with his head, while Natasha noses under her jaw, licks across the scent gland, and Toni shudders, feeling the curl of pre-heat warm her belly. It’s been a nigh-constant sensation in the last few weeks, but this time, she has no intention of fighting it. “Yes,” she whispers, closes her eyes, and throws herself into the change. 

Behind her, she hears Clint snarl a vicious warning, but she’s running free now, paws barely touching the ground as she races across the grass and back into the cool, deep trees. Her blood is on fire, her thoughts primal and sharp, and she knows how this chase is going to end. If they’re worthy, and she thinks they are, they’ll catch her. 

But she doesn’t make it easy for them, flirting with them from the shadows beneath a bush, twisting in new directions when they lunge to cut off her escape routes, barks mockingly as she races away again, leaving the would-be Primes growling and snapping in the wake of her heat-scent. 

A streak of sandy-brown barrels into her from the left, and she yips as Clint takes her off her feet, sends her rolling. He’s tried this tactic before, and she scrambles to her feet, dancing on two paws to shift direction. 

A blur of dark red-brown pounces from the right, unexpected and sudden, and Natasha shifts mid-roll, quick as a spider to wrap her human limbs around Toni, weighing her down. Toni struggles, unwilling to let the chase end so soon, but then Clint is there, one paw on her chest, growling in playful warning as she wriggles against Natasha’s merciless hold. 

She shivers into human skin, writhing against the slide of breasts and skin beneath her, the slide of skin and weight above her as Clint returns to two legs and presses against her. “Mine,” he rasps, and lowers his head to the side of her neck. 

“Mine,” Natasha echoes harshly from the other side, and Toni trembles between them as the mating-fog rolls over her mind. 

They strike together, sinking their teeth into her skin, marking her as theirs. She howls as the pack bond between them bursts into brilliant light and searing heat, and the court-bond snaps into place, dragging her down to where there is nothing but their scents and their skin and the indescribable, wondrous sensations of claiming and being claimed, of three souls entwining as one. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Join me on Tumblr, at [allthemarvelousrage.tumblr.com](http://allthemarvelousrage.tumblr.com/). I'm very friendly and love hearing from my readers.


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